The Intercept | May 18, 2016 Six years ago, FBI agents in Jacksonville, Florida, wrote a memo to their bosses in Washington, DC, that could have unraveled the largest consumer fraud in American history. It went to the heart of the shady mortgage industry that precipitated the financial crisis, and the case promised to involve nearly every major bank in the country, honing in on the despicable practice of using bogus documents to illegally kick people out of their homes.

But despite impaneling a grand jury, calling in dozens of agents and forensic examiners, doing 75 interviews, issuing hundreds of subpoenas, and reviewing millions of documents, the criminal investigation resulted in just one conviction. And that convict—Lorraine Brown, CEO of the third-party company DocX that facilitated the fraud scheme—was sent to prison for duping the banks.

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, VICE has obtained some 600 pages of documents from the Jacksonville FBI field office showing how agents conducted a sprawling investigation. (The Jacksonville case is also featured in my new book, Chain of Title.) The documents suggest the feds gained a detailed understanding of how and why the mortgage industry enlisted third-party companies to create false documents they presented to courts, as detailed in the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement, for which the big banks paid billions in civil fines. The banks' conduct is described in the settlement documents as "unlawful," and the Jacksonville FBI had it nailed almost two years earlier. Read more here.

SITE DISCLAIMER: This website was created by Jeffrey Jackson & Associates, PLLC ("the firm") for informational purposes only. No warranty of the information contained herein is given. No legal advice is given or is intended. No attorney-client relationship exists between the firm and any user of this website. No attorney-client privilege exists regarding any communications to and from this website. The firm assumes no liability for any use or interpretation of the contents of this website. Communications to and from this website are not warranted to be secure and cannot be treated as confidential. Links to other websites provided in this site do not signify sponsorship or connection of any kind between the firm and any such website.